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OPEN LETTER FROM ENAMINE FOUNDER AND CEO DR. ANDREY TOLMACHOV in Kyiv.
Enamine is a company that produces building blocks for modern small molecule drug development. I have not done business with them, but I have met some of the team members here in New Jersey.
Apparently 50% of the worlds building block core structures are synthesized in Ukraine, and important drug discovery efforts around the world are supported by Ukrainian organic chemists. I have been wondering about the safety of Enamine's chemical libraries - well over a million compounds - ever since the war broke out.
Dr. Tolmachov's letter is here: OPEN LETTER FROM ENAMINE FOUNDER AND CEO DR. ANDREY TOLMACHOV
I produce it here in its entirety:
Dear Customers, Dear Colleagues, Dear Friends,
The war in our country lasts more than 10 days. We have put on hold most of our operations in Kyiv and ask our customers to wait until this situation is resolved. We thank all of you for your patience. During this time, we have been able to estimate our resources, capabilities, and plan next steps to be done. Now I would like to highlight some of them:
Data. We have already fully transferred all the digital data on safe servers outside Ukraine. Thus, all our databases, all our internal documentation and procedures, and all the confidential information of our clients are secured and now physically located outside of Ukraine. Also, our internal system is not tied to Ukrainian servers and this fact can facilitate the further organization of the manufacturing process outside Ukraine.
Our stock. The entire collection of screening compounds and major building block collection are in Kyiv. Delivery from Kyiv is impossible now. Our EU stock in Riga and US stock in New Jersey operate as usual. Last few days Ukrainian government has made important steps to facilitate logistics inside and outside Ukraine. Therefore, we hope to resume (at least partially) the delivery process in the nearest time and do our best to ensure the gradual replenishment of both the EU and the US stocks with substances from Ukraine. We cannot disclose any details now, but we actively work in this direction.
Synthesis work. We are going to relocate part of the chemists outside of Ukraine to continue at least part of synthetic work mostly for our FTE customers. The new location is in Riga, Latvia. During the last week, we have received many proposals to accept our people in different institutions/universities/companies located in various countries of Europe. After several discussions, we have decided to focus on Riga.
First, we have a long-time partnership with the Latvian Institute of Organic Chemistry (LIOS) that is ready to provide us a lab space for up to 20 chemists to retain the synthetic work. We would like to thank our Latvian friends and personally Prof. Osvalds Pugovičs, the head of LIOS, for their willingness to support us. Also, the presence of our EU stock and logistic center in Riga can facilitate smooth workflow in this new location.
The work won’t be so effective and productive as in Kyiv. The EU stock is relatively small and at least in the nearest few weeks, the transfer of reagents and building blocks from Ukraine will be limited. Also, we cannot expand large-scale activities in Riga, and currently, the team of ~15 chemists are the maximum we can transfer to Riga: according to the martial law, men aged 18-60 cannot leave Ukraine. Also, many chemists have been mobilized and take an active part in volunteer movement. Some cannot leave the country for family reasons.
Nevertheless, this week first Enamine chemists will come to Riga and start preparing for the arrival of the rest of the team.
We also understand that in these circumstances we need some additional labs where we can deploy at least partial work on the building block synthesis and some custom synthesis tasks. We understand that our building blocks are extremely important for our customers and that their production costs should not increase significantly. Taking this into account we are searching for a possibility to purchase or rent some additional site in Europe or Asia. Alternatively, we are looking for a possibility to enter partnerships with other CROs or vendors to resume the synthetic work on their facilities.
We understand our customers wait for concrete decisions from us to plan future works on their programs. In the nearest time, we are going to disclose some further steps for the stabilization of the Enamine operations.
It is an extremely challenging time for us, but Ukraine will stand.
And Enamine will stand as well.
Slava Ukraini!
Andrey Tolmachov
The war in our country lasts more than 10 days. We have put on hold most of our operations in Kyiv and ask our customers to wait until this situation is resolved. We thank all of you for your patience. During this time, we have been able to estimate our resources, capabilities, and plan next steps to be done. Now I would like to highlight some of them:
Data. We have already fully transferred all the digital data on safe servers outside Ukraine. Thus, all our databases, all our internal documentation and procedures, and all the confidential information of our clients are secured and now physically located outside of Ukraine. Also, our internal system is not tied to Ukrainian servers and this fact can facilitate the further organization of the manufacturing process outside Ukraine.
Our stock. The entire collection of screening compounds and major building block collection are in Kyiv. Delivery from Kyiv is impossible now. Our EU stock in Riga and US stock in New Jersey operate as usual. Last few days Ukrainian government has made important steps to facilitate logistics inside and outside Ukraine. Therefore, we hope to resume (at least partially) the delivery process in the nearest time and do our best to ensure the gradual replenishment of both the EU and the US stocks with substances from Ukraine. We cannot disclose any details now, but we actively work in this direction.
Synthesis work. We are going to relocate part of the chemists outside of Ukraine to continue at least part of synthetic work mostly for our FTE customers. The new location is in Riga, Latvia. During the last week, we have received many proposals to accept our people in different institutions/universities/companies located in various countries of Europe. After several discussions, we have decided to focus on Riga.
First, we have a long-time partnership with the Latvian Institute of Organic Chemistry (LIOS) that is ready to provide us a lab space for up to 20 chemists to retain the synthetic work. We would like to thank our Latvian friends and personally Prof. Osvalds Pugovičs, the head of LIOS, for their willingness to support us. Also, the presence of our EU stock and logistic center in Riga can facilitate smooth workflow in this new location.
The work won’t be so effective and productive as in Kyiv. The EU stock is relatively small and at least in the nearest few weeks, the transfer of reagents and building blocks from Ukraine will be limited. Also, we cannot expand large-scale activities in Riga, and currently, the team of ~15 chemists are the maximum we can transfer to Riga: according to the martial law, men aged 18-60 cannot leave Ukraine. Also, many chemists have been mobilized and take an active part in volunteer movement. Some cannot leave the country for family reasons.
Nevertheless, this week first Enamine chemists will come to Riga and start preparing for the arrival of the rest of the team.
We also understand that in these circumstances we need some additional labs where we can deploy at least partial work on the building block synthesis and some custom synthesis tasks. We understand that our building blocks are extremely important for our customers and that their production costs should not increase significantly. Taking this into account we are searching for a possibility to purchase or rent some additional site in Europe or Asia. Alternatively, we are looking for a possibility to enter partnerships with other CROs or vendors to resume the synthetic work on their facilities.
We understand our customers wait for concrete decisions from us to plan future works on their programs. In the nearest time, we are going to disclose some further steps for the stabilization of the Enamine operations.
It is an extremely challenging time for us, but Ukraine will stand.
And Enamine will stand as well.
Slava Ukraini!
Andrey Tolmachov
I'll excerpt another letter on the Enamine webiste, from earlier in the war, from Dr. Tolmachov:
Dear Customers, Dear Colleagues, Dear Friends,
Andrey TolmachovWhen I started the company after the USSR collapse there were just a couple of labs in the academic institute. Nowadays my company is well known around the world.
For years, Ukraine has been a valuable partner for drug discovery delivering chemical innovation and new technologies. Enamine’s contribution to the world’s stock of chemical building blocks and reagents is over 70%. As Derek Lowe said in his “In the pipeline”, “the catalogs are full of synthetic building blocks with easily coupled functional groups” delivered by Enamine has transformed medicinal and synthetic organic chemistry into “a Lego-like exercise in sticking pieces together”.
Ukrainian companies Enamine, Life Chemicals, and Otava Chemicals contribute a lot to the world’s stock of chemical screening compounds: over 50% of the molecules originate from Ukraine. And I think that the contribution of these compounds to drug discovery research has become much higher. Every month we deliver thousands of novel compounds and thus simplify and speed up the search for new medicines...
Andrey TolmachovWhen I started the company after the USSR collapse there were just a couple of labs in the academic institute. Nowadays my company is well known around the world.
For years, Ukraine has been a valuable partner for drug discovery delivering chemical innovation and new technologies. Enamine’s contribution to the world’s stock of chemical building blocks and reagents is over 70%. As Derek Lowe said in his “In the pipeline”, “the catalogs are full of synthetic building blocks with easily coupled functional groups” delivered by Enamine has transformed medicinal and synthetic organic chemistry into “a Lego-like exercise in sticking pieces together”.
Ukrainian companies Enamine, Life Chemicals, and Otava Chemicals contribute a lot to the world’s stock of chemical screening compounds: over 50% of the molecules originate from Ukraine. And I think that the contribution of these compounds to drug discovery research has become much higher. Every month we deliver thousands of novel compounds and thus simplify and speed up the search for new medicines...
There is a cost to this savagery beyond the lives lost directly by war.
This is a modern equivalent of the burning of the Library of Alexandria more than 1000 years ago, a tragedy for all humanity.
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